


Second Best

by Anonymous



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Airports, Anal Sex, Angst, Arcades, Bisexuality, Coffee Shops, Comic Book Store, Demisexuality, Depression, Drunk Sex, Exy, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Hotels, I FORGOT TO TAG ANGST I'M SO SORRY, I can't remember what's canon anymore you guys, Inferiority Complex, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Panic Attacks, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Drug Addiction, Pining, Platonic Hand Holding, Platonic Kissing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roommates, Roommates to lovers, Rough Sex, Sexual Identity Exploration, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Soft sex, Who Knows?, ace spec, bed sharing, bffs first bfs second, bowling, history nerd Kevin Day, internalized biphobia/homophobia, it's kevaaron fake dating that's all you really need to know, library study sessions, lol someone's in denial about what platonic means bc it's not platonic at all, nerds, past references to drug abuse, platonic hand jobs, pre-med Aaron Minyard, so many fake dates, so no guarantees this is canon compliant, what am I tagging???, winter banquet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27212254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: (Kevaaron fake dating AU)Kevin Day knows what it’s like to be second best.So he might take it a little too personally when Katelyn breaks up with Aaron. And when he comes up with a plan to make Katelyn jealous to help Aaron win her back, he only wants what's best for his friend - because that's what he and Aaron are, after all. Friends. Roommates. Teammates.But after a series of setbacks, he insists that their plans are failing because Aaron isn’t a good actor, or he's not trying hard enough, or he's not taking it seriously. Or maybe, a traitorous part of his brain suggests, it's because Kevin is not nearly as invested in helping Aaron get Katelyn back as he is in making Aaron happy and -Shit.---Featuring: coffee shop dates, library study sessions, bowling, arcades, pre-med Aaron, the return of the Winter Banquet, a game called ‘let’s avoid Neil and Andrew having sex in the dorms’ and ‘let’s avoid Nicky skyping Erik at 2AM’ and ‘Dan and Matt are really loud in bed so of course we're hiding outside together’, falling asleep on the Foxes’ bus, redeye flights, Kevin having more depth than an Exy stick, lots of sexual tension.
Relationships: (also ex), (ex), Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau, Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Kevin Day/Aaron Minyard, Kevin Day/Thea Muldani, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Nicky Hemmick/Erik Klose
Comments: 83
Kudos: 151
Collections: Anonymous





	1. The Breakup

**Author's Note:**

> KEVAARON! All other tagged ships are either previous (ie kevin/thea are broken up before this fic takes place) or background ships. So yeah, if you aren't here for Kevaaron, don't leave hate and this is your chance to exit~ 
> 
> (something-something-don't-like-don't-read, IDK)
> 
> This is going to be long (L O N G) and slow (S L O W) to update, with both Kevin's and Aaron's POV.
> 
> So, let’s not reinvent the wheel here: this is a Kevaaron fake-dating-AU with as many college student/Exy fake-dating tropes as possible. (Ex)-roommates to best friends to lovers with a heavy dose of angst for good luck because these boys are going to finally win first place in each other’s hearts~ 
> 
> If you’re here for the physical manifestation of the garbage that floats around inside the trash heap that I call a brain, welcome aboard the kevaaron train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: mention of the word Thanksgiving, because that word implies a whole lot (but none of it is said directly AT ALL). Angst due to Katelyn + Aaron's breakup. Aaron thinks no one cares about him anymore and is v depressed (also he does not actually know the stages of grief and I love him for that).

* * *

**“How bravely beautiful it is, that sometimes, the sea wants the city, even when it has been told its entire life it was meant for the shore.”**

\- Christopher Poindexter

* * *

Aaron doesn’t see it coming, despite the obvious signs.

Her text is the start to every bad rom-com he’s ever seen: _we need to talk._

His first reaction is to text back, _about what?_ But once the words are typed out in front of him, he deletes the whole thing without sending it. He sounds like a dumb jock boyfriend. Like Seth. Or Matt. Or Neil. God, he doesn’t want to be the Neil Josten in his relationship.

He knows they need to talk. He’s not an idiot, but he wishes he could play dumb about this for a little while longer. 

Twenty minutes later, when he meets her in the food court downstairs, she isn’t sitting at the corner table _(their table,_ he thinks, because it’s where they eat together every Friday night when one or both of them aren’t at away games). It shouldn’t mean anything, but it does. He knows Katelyn well enough to know that it absolutely _does._

Then he sees her water bottle sitting on the table. Neon orange, with three stickers on it. A PSU NCAA Exy racquet sticker. A Palmetto State Foxes Summer Cheer Camp sticker. And a _MINYARD #03_ sticker - which is fine, even though it’s Andrew’s jersey number. They don’t sell stickers or merchandise for the Other Minyard, as the press has dubbed him since last year. He's a passable backliner at best, content to live in Andrew's shadow when it comes to Exy.

And it's not like Katelyn has the #03 sticker out of malice; when she had realized that the PSU bookstore only sold a MINYARD #03 sticker, she was outraged on Aaron’s behalf. Andrew probably doesn’t know he even _has_ stickers, she reasoned, and Aaron laughed because it was true. (Andrew also probably doesn’t know about the jerseys or keychains or teddy bears with tiny orange Minyard #03 shirts on - which Aaron is going to one day gift to Neil so Andrew will have to live with the reminder of his neon orange Exy shame for the rest of his life). But Aaron had pointed out they've got the same name and it really wasn't a big deal to him, so the #03 sticker had ended up on her water bottle as a kind of joke. 

She wanted to see if her friends on the cheer team would notice that it wasn't Aaron's jersey, but the funny thing is no one ever did.

Now, it’s the missing name that matters, and it doesn't seem funny anymore.

The _MINYARD #03_ sticker is half peeled off, so only the - _ARD_ and _#03_ are left underneath the unfortunately decapitated remains of the orange and white Exy racquet. Neil and Kevin would absolutely murder her for that alone. Andrew, too, but only because he has never needed an excuse to do so. 

Like everything Katelyn does, this is intentional. Deliberate. She twists the cap on her water bottle as she talks, the plastic squeaking obnoxiously.

“This isn’t working for me anymore, babe."

He’s still staring at the stupid sticker. When he looks up at her, there’s no hint of a smile on her face. 

“You’re focused on your own thing," she continues, "which is great, but - I feel like you’ve changed. And it’s a lot to handle, you know? For us. For me. And I don't want to lie about this so ... I just don’t think it’s working anymore.” 

He sits there like a goddamned idiot, his mind blank as he waits for the punchline. 

She’s not joking, it turns out. 

He wants to blame it on Exy and cheerleading and med school applications and scholarship interviews and needing to keep a 3.95 GPA if he wants to stay competitive for Baylor, plus p-chem has been kicking his ass this semester -

But that’s the problem. Every day, there's a million other things on his mind. They’re both busy people, but Aaron is the only one feeling like he’s barely keeping his head above water. Because Katelyn? She’s always been a natural at it. She’s never had to work half as hard as Aaron has, never had to fight tooth and nail for every scrap of good that came into her life. She makes a 4.0 and 18 credit-hour-semesters and co-captaincy of the cheer team look goddamned _easy_ and that's what he fell in love with at first, but it's also what he hates. 

Because he’s always known she deserves better. It just hurts to hear her say it. 

“I’m worried about you," Katelyn says when he remains quiet. "Every time we go out, it feels like you’re trying to drown your problems and you keep saying it’ll be different, but it’s not. And God, I tried. For the past six months I’ve fucking _tried_ but we’re both just getting more and more miserable, aren’t we? And hell, I’m twenty-one. I’m allowed to have fun too, right? But this isn’t fun anymore for me. We're just different people than we used to be, I think." She drops her voice as she picks at the edge of the table. "I just ... need more than this, babe.” 

She's wrong about the different people thing, though. They're both exactly the same, and that's the problem. He wasn't supposed to stay _Aaron Minyard_ forever, but that's exactly who he is. And he's never been one to hold onto the past, but he’s also never learned to let it go, so he's stuck.

He just nods, and she gets up, puts a hand on his shoulder, but he doesn’t move.

He still hasn’t said anything. 

“You want me to call Nicky or Andrew for you?” 

He shakes his head, and she squeezes his shoulder once before letting go. 

“See you at Friday’s game.” 

And then, just like that, she’s gone. They’re Not A Thing anymore, and it feels like he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

He could be mature about this and realize that Katelyn is allowed to want experiences that he can’t give her. He could let her go gracefully; he can’t begrudge her looking for happiness, especially when he can’t seem to find it himself. 

And she’s not wrong. Roughly translated, Aaron thinks that _it's not fun anymore_ means: _now that_ _we don’t have to sneak around behind your psycho twin’s back, life just isn’t the same. Not when we aren't spending bonfire season in the back of the cheer captain’s Jeep having sex when no one’s looking. Not when we have to schedule seeing each other between study sessions and practice. Not when being together feels more like an obligation than a relationship._

He’s been thinking it himself. He’s been waiting for this, in a sick kind of way. Waiting for her to get tired of him. 

By the time he gets back upstairs to his dorm, he’s already made a mental list of all the reasons he’s _fun._

One: he’s definitely fun. 

Two: he’s smart as hell. 

Three: he knows chemistry jokes. Which are funny _and_ sexy. 

And _okay,_ it’s a short list, and he doesn’t have actual evidence to prove any of those three points, but he’s a little distracted by the whole _girlfriend-just-broke-up-with-me_ thing. Anyway, just because he learned how to keep his dick in his pants doesn’t mean he isn't _fun._ He just doesn’t want to get arrested for public indecency; is that so bad?

Before he realizes what he's doing, he's passed his own dorm room. The one he shares with Jack and Matt, and by extension Dan, since she comes over more often than not. When he tries the door to 317, it's open. He might not live with Andrew and Nicky and Neil and Robin and Kevin anymore, but he still comes here to relax when it's quiet. It feels like his freshman year again, when he and Nicky would play video games instead of studying, when Andrew would smoke too much indoors and Kevin would complain about it.

It feels a little like home, but he doesn't live here anymore, so it’s not.

He’s sitting in one of the beanbags, still turning over Katelyn's words in his mind, when Robin barges in after class and starts rifling through the kitchen cabinets.

“You guys throw out all of my Bugles or what?” She asks, shoving aside a container of Kevin’s oatmeal that says _HEART HEALTHY_ in huge letters across the front. 

Aaron stares at the blank TV screen.

They don’t really talk. Robin is Andrew’s pet project, and the half of the time that she _does_ speak to him, he suspects it’s because she hasn’t quite figured out which twin is which. 

For that reason alone, he usually doesn’t talk to her, but he’s in a vulnerable place. It’s just a bit pitiful _(desperate,_ his brain supplies) that he has to turn to Robin for it. 

“Do you think I’m fun?” He asks. 

“Do I - what?” Robin pauses her search, a bag of mini oreos half-open in her hands. Andrew’s, probably. She’s the only one who gets away with stealing his shit. 

“Do you think I’m still fun?” Aaron repeats, more forcefully. A small voice in his head says, _sounds like something a boring guy would ask._ “Interesting?” 

Robin’s nose scrunches. “That implies you were fun before. Which you weren't. Why, is this a twin thing? Is Andrew bullying you again?”

And, yeah, this is a terrible idea. There’s a reason he and Robin aren’t close. 

In a move that would make Neil proud, Aaron throws his phone onto the couch and grabs his keys. He feels like getting lost for a few hours, and has a short list of ways to accomplish that. It’s not a feeling he’s unfamiliar with, but it’s been at least two or three years since he’s felt the urge to scratch this itch so badly.

“Andrew doesn’t _bully_ me,"he says. “And anyway, he’s an asshole to everyone.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Not to me. Or Neil.” 

She’s only been a Fox for a little while, but she clearly knows the pecking order already. She knows that Aaron has found himself on the bottom of the food chain ever since Baltimore, even though she wasn't on the team back then.

“Whatever,” Aaron growls. "This never happened."

He can hear her laughing behind him when he leaves.

\---

Aaron knows the odds aren’t in his favor with Robin. She probably doesn’t even wait five minutes before telling Nicky or Andrew or Neil that he’s a whiny little bitch.

To be fair, she started to call him that weeks ago, back when she first scored against him by body-checking him out of the way and he ended up with a bruised rib. (Which is _painful,_ he had every right to call a time-out so Abby could check it out.)

But now he’s starting to wonder if Katelyn was right after all. Maybe he’s just an un-fun, whiny, boring little bitch. 

It leaves him on edge, because if Andrew finds out that Aaron is going around asking girls, _Am I boring?,_ Aaron really will want to disappear forever. There is very little he asks for in life, and having Andrew look up at him from the bean bag with that dead-eyed stare while he mouths _pathetic_ is not something Aaron wants to live through twice. (Bonus points if Neil Josten is curled asleep in Andrew’s lap, like last time.)

Therefore, he avoids Fox Tower like the plague for the next six hours until the student librarian kicks him out because it’s “closing time”, as if that’s _allowed._ Who gave them the power to limit students’ access to centuries of research, anyway? Who made them the gatekeepers of knowledge, to deny inquisitive minds entry into the halls of curiosity? Fuck them. And fuck Jacob Martins in particular, who is the unlucky undergrad tasked with telling Aaron he only has fifteen minutes before the lights turn off and the doors lock.

If Speedway can stay open 24/7, so can the fucking _library._

And - yeah, he needs to take a breather. His hands are shaking, and he knows Jacob Martins is probably paid ten bucks an hour to tell horny eighteen-year-olds to stop making out in the stacks on the fourth floor most of the time, but he’s spiraling. It’s been weeks since he’s gone to Eden’s with his family, because Josten is always around and Aaron has better things to do with his time than watch Neil grind on his twin for four-plus hours in a poorly-lit club while also babysitting Nicky and Kevin. Add in having to text Katelyn every so often that no, he’s not dancing with other girls, and it doesn't exactly seem fun anymore.

 _Take a fucking breath,_ he tells himself. Even his thoughts are racing. 

At least now he won’t have to text Katelyn if he goes to Columbia again. 

But Eden’s isn’t on the table tonight; he has early morning practice tomorrow with the rest of the defensive line, and a full day of classes after that. He needs sleep more than anything else, and he can’t get that anywhere but his dorm. 

On the bright side, coming back at 1 AM means that everyone is already asleep. Andrew and Neil are pillbugged together in their (twin, pint-sized) bed, and Kevin is in the bunk above Aaron’s, his back to the room. Nicky is dead to the world as always.

Aaron toes out of his sneakers with a quiet precision borne of too many nights waking up the more lethal half of the Josten-Minyard power couple (he awards the title to a different victor each week depending on who’s in a worse mood; this week it’s Neil), which often ends with a knife embedded in the wall next to the door. 

Then he stops, because someone's in his bed.

Not his bed.

It's Robin's bed now, isn't it? Because he's in the wrong fucking room, as though he's trying to sleepwalk back into a life that was happier.

He makes it all the way back out to the lounge before the lights flip on behind him, because his luck ran out fifteen years ago. Of course someone has to catch him wandering around Fox Tower wistfully in the middle of the night, desperately trying to forget about the girl who just broke his heart. 

Kevin doesn't speak as he stares at Aaron from across the lounge. There's a spike of familiarity at seeing Kevin like this: in an old cotton PSU Exy t-shirt, his socks a little crooked (because for some reason Kevin needs to tell the _whole world_ that he gets cold feet when he sleeps), his boxers hung low on his hips, his cheek creased from where it's been pressed against the pillow. He blinks at Aaron tiredly, as though he, too, is trying to remember what year it is.

Eventually, Kevin drifts over to the beanbags and slumps into one, slowly peeling his socks off one by one. Aaron wonders if he's even awake, but then Kevin balls up one of his socks and hits the back of Aaron's head with it, so he scratches that theory pretty quickly. Kevin's definitely awake.

"You have practice in four hours," Kevin says through a yawn, still thinking about Exy even in the middle of the night. "You should be asleep."

Aaron tries to ignore him, but there’s something achingly familiar about Kevin bitching at him about not getting enough sleep before practice, and he can’t stop the way his chest constricts when he tries to breathe. It’s all so routine, but it’s the predictability that hurts. His world just turned upside-down a few hours ago. Kevin has no business acting as if nothing’s changed, even if Aaron has told exactly zero people about what just transpired between him and Katelyn.

And then it's like a dam breaking. For the first time since Katelyn said the words _this isn’t working for me anymore,_ Aaron allows himself to wonder how the fuck he didn’t see their breakup coming sooner. After fighting tooth and nail with Andrew to get permission to break their deal - amend their deal, whatever _-_ Katelyn can’t just walk away without so much as a real goodbye. 

Except she can, and she did, and now Aaron's standing in a dorm that doesn't belong to him with the guy who used to sleep in the bunk below him and he can't help but wonder when the last time Kevin smacked his ankle was. Because that was their thing - Aaron would dangle his foot over the edge of top bunk before jumping down and Kevin would hit him in their silent signal for _I’m trying to sleep down here, asshole, so don’t jump down unless you want to risk crushing me and having to explain to Wymack why I’ve suddenly got a broken back._

That's the kind of thing that makes him feel like he has friends. Or _had_ friends, before he moved out and Robin moved in and Kevin moved on and Andrew did, too. Whatever Aaron-shaped space he used to fill here has long since been swallowed by the shifting of bodies and lives and relationships, all moving on while he's stuck in the past.

But out of everyone, Kevin has kept several of Aaron’s very few secrets, so it isn’t difficult for Aaron to trust him in this moment of vulnerability.

"She left me," he says, still standing in the middle of the lounge. He doesn't want to sit next to Kevin, not when he can still feel the ghost of Katelyn's hand on his shoulder.

It's a mistake to say it out loud, though, because it leaves him feeling exhausted, like it took all of his energy to admit it.

Kevin raises an eyebrow before letting his head fall back against the beanbag, shutting his eyes when he mutters, "Thought you looked like shit." 

Aaron doesn't have it in him to respond to that. He just stares at the fridge, where someone has put up the Foxes' team picture, taken after a game against the Bearcats last month. There's another one from their championship win last year that he tries not to look at, because he knows his arm is around Katelyn's waist, his helmet in her hand as she tilts her head back and waits for him to kiss her. They're frozen in time like that forever. 

"She left me," Aaron repeats. 

"You need to talk about it?" Kevin asks. "Because I can wake up Nicky for you." 

Aaron shakes his head. He doesn't want to risk saying anything else when there's a chance Andrew or Neil or Nicky or Robin could walk in at any moment. He knows the breakup won’t be a secret forever, but he needs space to work things out before he's ready to handle the rest of the team. And it's bad enough that Robin probably already thinks he's going around fishing for complements or something. Kevin is just easier to tell because … 

It doesn't matter. He just doesn't want to tell the rest of them until it feels less like he's being strangled by his own words.

The other Foxes will have zero sympathy for his breakup. They’ve all been through too much shit for something as trivial as a broken college romance to register on their radar as potentially traumatizing. Not that Aaron’s traumatized by this: he’s just fragile enough to think of it as the worst thing that’s happened since last Thanksgiving. Since the trial. But the last thing he needs tonight is to start thinking about the past. 

Kevin stares at the empty beanbag next to him. "If you don't want to talk, you should at least sleep." 

Aaron doesn't want to sleep. When he has bad days (and today is a _very_ bad day), it feels like he'll get trapped in his nightmares if he dares to shut his eyes. 

It’s enough to put a mug of light-roast in his hands to keep himself awake, and he passes the rest of the night sitting in the beanbag next to Kevin. And even though Kevin falls asleep approximately two minutes after Aaron sits down, at least he doesn't leave him alone. It helps to hear the sound of someone else's breathing in the same room, but even that's a weak excuse for the relief he feels settle in his bones by dawn. Because he could've listened to Jack and Matt sleeping back in his own room. 

He tries not to think about it too much.

It isn't until Neil stumbles out of bed, right after the first glow of sunrise reaches through the windows to splash orange light across Kevin's sleeping face, that Aaron realizes he's drinking out of one of Kevin's mugs. That’s probably a good thing, since using one of Neil's or Andrew's would end in his untimely demise. 

He takes a tentative sip, but whatever dregs are left in the cup have long since gone cold. 

“You’re up early,” Neil says, his hair flattened to one side from where he slept on it.

Aaron glares at him, not bothering with a response to that. He's delirious enough as it is from the exhaustion and emotional burnout, and the last thing he needs is Dr. Josten's therapeutic intervention. 

Next to him, Kevin stirs, wiping drool from his chin as he opens his eyes to look up at Aaron. He glances at the mug in Aaron’s hand and asks, as if he never got out of the habit, “What’s in Tampa?” 

Neil snorts, and Aaron can practically hear him rolling his eyes. 

It’s a thing he and Kevin started doing a long time ago, and he doesn’t remember anymore how it started. All he knows is that when he lived here, he used to harass Kevin about those stupid Starbucks mugs, the ones from a specific city or state illustrated on the mug. Aaron would ask the same question every fucking morning: _what's in New Orleans?_ Or: _what's in Phoenix?_ Or: _what's in Colorado?_ Because Kevin has one from every fucking city they've played in, every state they've visited as a team. 

And somewhere along the way, Kevin stopped saying _fuck you_ whenever Aaron would ask, and he'd make up some stupid bullshit instead. _Best strip clubs on the East Coast,_ Kevin once said about his Baltimore mug, and Aaron practically snorted his own drink. Not that it was even that funny. It was just stupid. 

They didn’t usually play this game when there’s a chance that Andrew or Neil could walk in, because those two are like bloodhounds. They’ll sniff out fun and kill it with their mob jokes and murder innuendos, and Aaron has so few secrets from his teammates that he’s allowed to want this one thing to remain private. But Kevin just asked _what's in Tampa?,_ and Aaron knows Neil is eavesdropping to hear his response.

He shrugs. “Orange juice?” 

Kevin was always better at that part of the game, anyway. 

Before Neil asks what the hell they're talking about Tampa for, Nicky appears out of nowhere like a goddamn ghost and asks, “Who’s got juice?” 

Aaron groans. This is why he isn’t _fun_ anymore. Because his life is full of fun-sucks. Neither Aaron nor Kevin nor Neil answer Nicky's question.

“You need a ride to practice? Neil asks instead, staring at Kevin as he jams a granola bar in his mouth. 

Kevin, in turn, stares at Aaron, as if his answer depends on what Aaron has to say.

“I'm not going,” Aaron mumbles, staring into the depths of his mug from Tampa that does not, in fact, contain any juice. Now that he's swirling the sad remains of his coffee around, he wonders how much vodka he could add to it before he gags on the concoction. 

Nicky starts talking to Neil about something Wymack-related that gets drowned out by someone turning on the shower, and the TV gets flipped on to ESPN-Exy. It feels overwhelming to be surrounded by so much _movement_ when all Aaron wants is a moment to be still. 

Kevin flicks Aaron's hand, the one that's holding the Tampa mug, and Aaron scowls at him, but no one else seems to be paying them much attention.

 _You okay?_ Kevin mouths. 

Aaron gives him a slight shake of his head, something along the lines of _not really,_ or _it doesn't matter,_ but Kevin only flicks his hand again. 

"Fuck off," Aaron mumbles. He supposes this is the beginning of the five-stages-of-grief. Denial - that was last night. Or maybe that was anger. And now he’s now tired. That’s a stage of grief, right? Bone-deep exhaustion that sucks the will to live right out of his lungs. He doesn't need Kevin Day flicking his hand and asking him if he's okay because he's _not._

Because this is what happens when the love of your life walks away, he supposes. Because Katelyn was supposed to be his forever. She talked about going to med school together and doing their residencies at the same hospital. They were supposed to get married and move somewhere that gets a real winter, so their kids would grow up with a white Christmas every year. They had plans for a house and a dog and a swing set in the backyard.

Now those plans have been reduced to pieces of broken dreams. Where’s the home he wanted to build with her? The city they'd make their own? They weren’t supposed to be unhappy. _He_ wasn’t supposed to be unhappy, not in the same way he'd been unhappy before he met her, but this feels like whatever sadness he used to carry has been sitting in the back of some cupboard for the past couple of years, gathering dust and waiting for him to rediscover its familiar face and shape and sound. 

He knows this intimately, this kind of greying of the world. 

“Earth to Aaron,” Kevin says, snapping his fingers in Aaron’s face. 

“What?” Aaron snaps, shoving Kevin’s hand away. Neil is gone, probably too eager to get to the court to wait for Aaron’s mental snafu to resolve itself. Nicky isn't around, either, and the shower has been turned off. It's quiet, all of a sudden. 

“I asked if you’re sick," Kevin says.

“No.” 

“Then why aren’t you coming to practice?"

Sometimes, Aaron is jealous of Kevin. He wishes he could be so hyper-focused on one thing that nothing else matters. He knows it comes at a price - the Son of Exy is hardly well-adjusted, and Kevin has breakdowns more often than not (Aaron would know; he shared a room with Kevin for long enough that by now, he knows the exact sound Kevin makes when he’s hyperventilating in the bathroom). It's an unfair thing to think, but he can't help it. On days like today, he wishes he could box up his troubles and only worry about playing Exy like his life depended on it. 

Although he supposes Kevin’s life _does_ depend on it, due to the deal Neil made and all, so that’s a bit cruel to think. 

He wonders if this is how Kevin feels most of the time: constantly on the verge of self-destruction. 

“Because Katelyn broke up with me, asshole," Aaron bites out. "Remember?” 

"Oh. Right," Kevin says, stretching through a yawn. Someone's left the coffee machine on, and Kevin goes to turn it off, his back to Aaron as he plays with the buttons for a moment. "You don't think beating the shit out of Neil on court would help?" 

"No," Aaron says, because it won't. 

“I mean, we still need you -”

“Fuck off," Aaron growls. "No one’s even going to notice I’m missing. And don’t act like any of them would care even if they did. They don't _need_ me.”

He swallows back the final part of that thought: _no one needs me._

“They might notice,” Kevin says, even though they both know it’s a lie. Aaron’s missed at least half a dozen practices over the past month alone due to meetings with his thesis advisor and picking up extra sessions at his tutoring job. Kevin knows, because of course he notices that kind of thing. It's Exy-adjacent, after all. 

That's when it hits Aaron: without Exy, he has nothing. No one would notice if he slept for fifteen hours a day or drank nothing but Coors Light for a month or stopped showing up to class. It's almost tempting enough to consider quitting the team. He could forget about all of this. 

But then he'd lose his scholarship, and he can't do that. 

It doesn't make him any less bitter towards Kevin right now, though.

“Nobody will even notice I'm gone,” Aaron says, and he doesn’t try to hide the bitter edge in his voice. “Nobody fucking cares - I could disappear and no one on this _fucking_ team would give two shits. I’m not Andrew. I’m not Kevin-fucking-Day, okay? I'm not you.”

Aaron knows it’s a low blow, and Kevin takes a step back. 

“You're right,” Kevin says, somehow not rising to the bait, even though Aaron wants him to. He wants Kevin to fucking deck him right now. He wants someone else to feel as destroyed as he feels, even though that's not healthy. "You're not me, and you're not Andrew, and you're not Neil. But you're a part of this team and you're supposed to show up when your team needs you." 

"Yeah? Well, fuck the team. I'm fucking done with this conversation." 

Before he can say anything worse, Aaron grabs his backpack from where he'd dropped it by the door last night, the exact spot he used to drop it when he lived here.

The door slams shut between them, and Aaron is once again on the outside looking in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> No idea when I'll have chapter 2 ready; this is my chaos fic and I'll post as soon as it's ready but that could be in a day or a week or a month! I have 30k words outlined so who knows how long it'll end up.


	2. The Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is some ~angst~ from the only Exy-obsessed striker on PSU's team that is actually tall enough to ride a roller coaster. 
> 
> listening to scenery by V makes me feel things for kevin and kayleigh _in the path full of flowers, i see you today too, would it be possible to carry it inside me? i will create a light by gathering the moonlight piece by piece, so please come to my side, the same way that you did yesterday. if you leave, leaving your footprints behind, I will keep that warmth safe..._
> 
> WARNINGS: SKIP THE FIRST HALF OF THIS CHAPTER TO AVOID THE FOLLOWING! depression/self-doubt, references to Kevin's broken hand/nightmares/prior alcohol (ab)use (up to your interpretation how to read his drinking habits), descriptions of the Binghampton riot + Andrew briefly strangling Kevin in Baltimore. Kevin experiencing intense PTSD/panic attack/flashback symptoms. Mentions of Aaron's drinking and cracker dust use/former drug use, + a mention of Janie Smalls (no specifics but just wanted to warn in case that's a sensitive subject area).
> 
> As always, I try to tag as much as possible so people don't get surprised by potentially triggering topics! Keep in mind there will not be graphic/prolonged descriptions of violence or harm against self/others in this fic. You can always comment down below if you have concerns before reading, too! 
> 
> Ok!! That said, THIS WILL GET BETTER!!!! i swear!! (when i put angst in the tags i meant ANGST but also when i put cute fake dates i meant CUTE FAKE DATES. i have zero chill basically and soft fake dates are on their way very very soon!!!!)

Not very many people look at Kevin Day and see a person.

To the Moriyama family, he’s an investment. To the Foxes, he's either an Exy-obsessed autocrat, a pain in the ass, or a future Olympic Gold Medalist, depending on who you ask. To the public, he’s a disappointment for leaving the Ravens or an inspiration for his recovery with the Foxes. He’s been called soulless, robotic, inhuman, entitled, driven, heroic, inspirational. He’s an enormously profitable dichotomy: still charming and enigmatic enough to get brand deals, still talented enough for professional scouts to come to the Foxes' games, still famous enough for ESPN-Exy to spend at least five minutes each week dissecting his personal life.

Still broken enough to have nightmares more often than not. 

But that's all just talk, and a real person is made out of more than just _talk._

That’s what he's been trying to do since he left the nest, after all: rebuild Kevin Day. Piece by piece, he’s finding bits of himself in unexpected places. Like how he realized he was allergic to dogs when Matt begged Randy to fly their golden retrievers down to campus during finals' week last semester. Or that his hands shake when he drinks 5 Hour Energy but not when he drinks espresso. Or that he discovered socks with sandals are surprisingly comfortable, especially in the winter. Or (thanks to Andrew) that he loves Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but he’d rather die than admit that aloud. 

And because of Aaron, he knows that his favorite color is sometimes red. The kind that comes from a South Carolina sunset, not blood. The kind that comes with a laugh and a smirk and a silhouette of a buzz cut against a summer sky, a racquet held high when they're out on the grass for an impromptu scrimmage. The kind of red that Kevin never saw at the Nest, the kind that makes the Raven's colors look pale and weak in comparison. 

He'd never watched a sunset before Palmetto.

Perhaps the most important thing he's learned recently: life can be relaxing when he has no one to perform for.

Slowly, he's been sifting through the wreckage inside of his head, trying to find enough of himself intact before he throws out the whole mess and resigns himself to being a caricature for the rest of his life. So far, he's got nothing more than an amalgamation of trauma and a few stray hopes and dreams that were too stubborn to die, and a shitload of fears.

There’s longing, too. Plenty of that.

He hasn't made sense of himself yet, and there’s a voice that says he never will. It's been long enough since he left the Nest, and he feels like any progress he made initially has stalled lately. Some days, it still feels like he just left the Nest yesterday. 

On his worse days, he hasn't left at all. He wakes up with Riko’s hand on his shoulder, phantom fingers curling into his skin. Even when he opens his eyes and tells himself he's at PSU, he's safe, he's _home,_ he knows that he'll never be free of those memories. 

They were kids, he and Riko. They were fucked up, but they were kids, weren’t they? Kevin knows he had a childhood outside of the Nest, a childhood travelling and living with his mother in New York and Ireland and Tokyo and a thousand other cities across the world. He was lucky to have what little time he had with her, but the older he gets, the more he realizes he missed out on.

He had a decade with her, which felt like a lot when he was only ten years old. 

But then he turned twenty, and suddenly he'd lived half his life without her and ten years felt like a lot more, a lot less, than it did before.

He can only imagine how it'll feel when he turns thirty, or forty, or fifty. 

And _fuck,_ if that doesn’t keep him up at night.

He's trying, though. He's trying to make her proud, trying to be the man she was raising him to be before the Nest broke him. But he's constructing an entire person on a scaffolding of perfectionism and obsession, unable to let go of the most ingrained traits that helped him survive the Nest. He's fucking _trying_ but it won't bring her back, and sometimes, he thinks it'd be easier without Exy, without the Foxes and Wymack and PSU and the annual media shit-storm when something inevitably goes wrong on their team.

But he has only ever had one constant in life.

Exy.

Before his mom died, all he wanted was to be the best striker in the world. And now that she’s gone, he can’t let go of the only thread that still connects them - God knows he’s tried. He has spent countless nights wondering what it would take for him to give up the game for good. His broken hand had been the perfect excuse to walk away; no one would've been surprised to see him give it up. 

He couldn't do it, though. Before his fractures had even set, while he was still sleeping on Wymack's couch and drowning his nightmares in vodka, he knew he'd end up back on the court. And look at him now: starting striker for the Palmetto State University Foxes, a .54 shooting percentage, a place to call home. A future. A life.

He's happier than he was at the Nest, if that counts for something.

And if that counts for something, then so does this: he's not as happy as he was _before_ the Nest. Before his mother died and his life fell apart. 

He's somewhere in the middle, usually.

Usually. Because that caveat is more important than he'd like to admit. Some days, he's the worst he's ever been. He hears the things everyone says about him: he’s a nuisance, a pain-in-the-ass, loud-mouthed, arrogant, self-absorbed. It's easier to let himself fall deeper into those assumptions than it is to prove them wrong. It's easier to act heartless than to admit he's trying to fill a hole in his chest. But he supposes, either way, he's heartless. 

He doesn't want to be heartless. If he could choose how to define himself, he’d be a son first.

Not the Son of Exy. Exy didn’t raise him, despite what everyone seems to think, and Exy didn’t die in an ambulance en route to Kollinger General while Kevin was in little league practice, unaware that his life was about to change forever. Exy didn’t show him how to play conkers or Red Rover or teach him how to tie his shoes. Exy didn’t read him to sleep and tuck his Paddington Bear under his arm when he had nightmares. Exy didn't kiss his forehead and tell him he was a special boy. Exy didn't tell him he was worth more than the moon and the stars and the sun, more than the money in the bank, more than the clothes on their backs. Exy didn't love him.

His mother did that.

So yeah, if he could, he’d ask the world to remember that he’s someone's son - Kayleigh's son - just so that he doesn’t forget it himself. 

After that, he’d be a friend - maybe someone’s best friend. A shoulder to lean on, a hand to wipe away the tears. A father, someday, he hopes. A neighbor, a person who knows everyone on their block by name. He’d become someone kind, and generous, and fair. And he thinks, given enough time, he could learn now to be gentle. He _wants_ to be gentle. He'd smooth over all of his rough edges and find some kind of peace to get him through the bad days. 

He’d make his mother proud. 

But it's hard to see past his tattoo, his jersey, his name printed in black letters on day-glow orange: _DAY #02._ After the autographs and press nights and interviews, he’s left feeling like a shell of a person, just as empty as the day he left Evermore, because not very many people look at Kevin Day and see a person. No one calls him special anymore. No one tucks him in and tells him he's worth more than the moon and the stars and the sun, but that's stupid because he's an adult now. He doesn't need someone to tell him he's _special_ anymore. At this point, he just wants to be called unbroken.

There is, however, an exception to every rule, and this is no different.

There is one person who is able to get under Kevin's skin with surgical precision, cutting down to the bone in order to find the remains of a boy the world has long since declared dead. 

_I could disappear and no one on this fucking team would give two shits._

Kevin was the one to say that first. That was one of his biggest secrets - one of the first that he entrusted to Aaron, because he used to think that feeling worthless was a Raven thing. Then, when he got to PSU, he kind of thought it was a Fox thing. Now, he wonders if it's a human thing, or if the people he meets in life are just more fucked up than the rest of the world. 

Maybe nobody else thinks those thoughts. Maybe everyone else does.

At least one other person does.

_I could disappear and no one on this fucking team would give two shits._

After this morning, it's Aaron's voice that repeats those words on a loop in Kevin's mind. It hurts to hear over and over again, knowing this is their shared language now. 

Kevin rubs his temples, trying to stop the headache that's building behind his eyes. He can hear Nicky talking to Neil in the lounge and Andrew tapping his lighter against the window frame in a staccato rhythm. He can't hear Robin, and doesn't know where she is. For the moment, he's alone in the bedroom, and all of the bunks are empty except his own.

It takes effort to fight the urge to turn over and check the bunk beneath his. Logically, he knows it isn't Aaron's anymore. It's Robins now, and there's an orange duvet instead of a navy blue one. Four pillows instead of one. There's a copy of Aesop's Fables in the original ancient Greek sticking out from under the bed instead of an Anatomy & Physiology textbook, and a pair of neon green gym shoes scattered across the middle of the rug instead of a pair of black ones lined up neatly by the foot of the bed. 

He stares at the ceiling for a full thirty seconds before giving in to the urge to check that Robin's bunk hasn't magically transformed back into Aaron's. 

The duvet is orange. The pillows are a mess. The gym shoes are neon green. The book has a plain leather cover. 

Aaron is gone.

Kevin can't pretend that everything is okay, even if the room looks the same as it always does nowadays. He hasn't seen Aaron since he walked out this morning, a cold _I'm fucking done with this conversation_ on his tongue before the door slammed shut between them. It used to be Andrew or Neil or Matt or Allison that Kevin spent his days worrying about, but right now, the cold fear that creeps into his gut is for Aaron alone. 

There's no guide for helping an ex-roommate get over his breakup, but Kevin can't do _nothing_ \- not that he has any idea what he should be doing right now.

He ends up typing a half-dozen texts to Aaron and deleting them all before he can hit send. The blinking cursor on his screen stares back up at him, the last message he received from Aaron from before the Katelyn breakup still left on read in the middle of his screen: _don't text me again about practice or I swear I'll actually block you this time._

Kevin types out a message before he can stop himself: _I don't want you to disappear._

And God, his chest aches when he stares at the words he wishes someone would say to him. He doesn't want Aaron to feel expendable, but that's what a breakup does: it splashes doubt across all of the good memories and makes the bad ones jagged, dangerous. 

Once again, he deletes it before hitting send, holding in a breath until his lungs ache. 

Aaron clearly needs help, and as far as Kevin knows, Aaron hasn't told anyone else about the breakup. No one else knows he's hurting, not to mention that no one else knows just how close Aaron toes the line between function and dysfunction most of the time.

Aaron hides it well - behind scowls and anger and being altogether closed-off, but Kevin has seen the way Aaron pushes himself too close to the edge when life gets to be too much to handle. In the past, Aaron seemed almost purposeful in his self-destruction: Eden's, cracker dust, drinking, hangovers, repeat. 

Kevin doesn't want to find out if Katelyn leaving is what finally pushes Aaron too far, what makes him drink too much, and chase a high he can't find. Aaron doesn't deserve to be reduce to another tragic Fox headline, a footnote on ESPN-Exy, a name that's just as easily forgotten as Janie Smalls.

Kevin never forgets, though.

It’s the reason he texts Matt instead of Aaron, hitting send this time before he can second-guess himself: _I need a favor._

He and Matt aren't exactly friends, and they sometimes they grate on each other's nerves, but Kevin is willing to put that aside for Aaron's sake. Matt is the only Fox he can trust with this information right now. 

His phone vibrates almost immediately with a response.

_Sure. What's up?_

Part of him just wants to know that Aaron came back to his dorm at some point today, that Matt has seen him shower and shave and brush his teeth like everything is normal. He wants to know that Aaron isn't falling down some kind of hole right now, much like Kevin is. 

His phone slips out of his hand and hits the ground, bouncing once before landing on the carpet next to Robin's shoes. 

Kevin doesn't move to get it.

Because this isn't about Aaron anymore. Once again - leave it to his own self-absorbed compulsions to twist this into something it's not - this is about _Kevin-fucking-Day._

His pulse jackrabbits in his veins, his mouth suddenly dry as he tries to stop the burning feeling in his stomach.

It goes like this: sometimes he's fine, and other times, he's not.

One second, he's texting Matt and worrying about the paper due on Tuesday and morning practice tomorrow and whether or not Aaron is going to be okay. The next, he's falling apart. It's like flipping a switch, but he doesn't know what flipped it or where the switch is or how to flip it back. So he's stuck falling apart when he should be trying to hold himself together for the people that need him. His team. Wymack. Neil. Aaron. 

He's in Palmetto, but he's not. His mind is unwinding towards some unfocused point in his past, trying to find the source of his discomfort. Kevin knows it isn't real, but it feels more real than anything else he's felt today and he can't stop the way his mind follows the same path it always does.

He's in Baltimore.

He's in a motel bathroom.

He isn't dying, but it feels like he is. 

There are hands around his throat. 

Shattered glass from the broken bus window catches in his hair like glitter. 

He's shouting for Renee outside of the stadium after the playoffs when he gets shoved face-first into the brick wall. 

It's all his fucking fault.

Neil's missing.

Allison's missing. Aaron's missing. Wymack's missing. 

He isn't _Kevin-fucking-Day_ anymore. He's someone who lets secrets sink their teeth into him, someone who lets the truth poison him from the inside out.

It's hard to breathe, and Kevin's instinct is to find something at least 160 proof to make this stop.

He doesn't want to relive the panic that he felt when he realized Neil was gone, the horror that struck him motionless when he realized he might be next. 

It only took the blink of an eye for Neil to disappear, and that's all it would take for him to disappear, too. And what would he leave behind? Like Neil, would his life be easily reduced to a backpack full of wrinkled clothes and a mostly-empty dorm room, two trash bags away from being ready for the next broken Fox to move in? And who would be tasked with getting rid of the notebooks stacked in Kevin's closet, the crumpled loose-leaf pages stuffed in the backs of desk drawers with stats from rival teams? Who would decide, at the end of the day, that there isn't anything worth keeping from this version of Kevin Day, the one whose handwriting is too cramped to decipher without a magnifying glass, the one who makes sure all of his socks are folded into each other in paired sets so they don't loose their mates? The version who never really had the chance to grow into himself? 

Who would've done that for Neil?

He knows the answer is Andrew. 

He would've cleaned up after whatever mess Neil or Nathaniel left behind, right until the bitter end. In fact, that's exactly what Andrew did when he wrapped his hands around Kevin's throat and almost strangled him to death for an ounce of information. 

Kevin couldn't breathe. He can't breathe. Spots swam - they still swim - in front of his eyes, a hand clamped tight around his throat, and he thinks the same thing every time this happens: _I wonder if he’d actually kill me,_ followed directly by the realization that yes, he's dying, and Andrew's the one making it happen.

Every time, he makes a decision. 

In the bathroom, he didn't say a thing. Not a word, just to see what would happen, how far Andrew would push him, and he has to live with the knowledge that he decided in that moment that he'd rather die than face another second as Kevin Day. 

He's in a motel bathroom, pinned to the wall by Andrew's weight, bruises already forming beneath his skin. He's choking on his past, unable to tap into the oxygen in the room. There's a crushing weight in his chest and his head pounds in a rhythm that starts to grow weaker, slower, because he still can't fucking _breathe_ and it's been long enough that he shouldn't still feel like this when he remembers the way the tiles his face were pressed into in the shower were yellow, like daisies. Yellow, like sunshine. 

_It wouldn't be so bad._

He had been willing to let Andrew become the worst kind of monster just to relieve himself of the burden of his own damned existence. 

He shut his eyes that day in the bathroom, and he shuts his eyes now, trying to erase the image of Andrew’s face as it twisted into a terrifying combination of anger and disbelief. 

Before consciousness slipped out of his reach, he had one final thought: _if the F_ _oxes could trade me for Neil, they’d do it in a heartbeat._

He wishes he could slip away now. 

It never ends how he wants it to, though. 

Not then, not now. 

Then, someone pulled Andrew off of him in time for him to hand over what little information he knew about the Wesninski family. He knows deep down that it was Aaron that pulled Andrew away, for Andrew's benefit as much as Kevin's. In that moment, with Neil missing, Kevin knows in his gut that the only person who could've gotten close enough to Andrew to pull him off of Kevin would've been Aaron. 

Now, though, his suffering is a byproduct of a chemical imbalance, an electrical pathway that he's reinforced too often, a strange combination of chemistry and biology and trauma and his own fragile existence. There's no real risk of dying anymore, but it feels like there is. Every fucking time, he thinks he's going to die, but he never does.

Kevin's hand claws at his neck of its own accord, scrabbling for purchase as if he could untangle the cobwebs of fear from around his throat. 

Aaron isn't here to save him this time. But that’s what it all comes down to at the end of the day: for once in his life, he doesn't want to be saved. He doesn't want to need saving. He wants to be the person Aaron thinks he is, the one he was referring to when he said to Kevin: _I'm not Andrew. I’m not Kevin-fucking-Day, okay? I’m not you._

Ignoring the fact that Aaron apparently thinks Kevin is better than him (Kevin isn’t better than any of the Foxes), it’s the last sentence that cuts Kevin to the bone: _I’m not Kevin-fucking-Day._ Because Aaron is the only one who knows that Kevin isn’t _Kevin-fucking-Day_ , either, and that’s the biggest secret of all. 

He shuts his eyes. Something runs electric through his veins, sending his thoughts scattering in a thousand different directions as the bathroom in Baltimore slips away, as Aaron's voice saying _I'm not Kevin-fucking-Day_ fades into silence, as Andrew's hand around his throat lets go. 

He keeps his eyes shut, curled on his side until he feels the sunlight in the room shift into darkness, the soft glow of afternoon making way for the absence of warmth as night settles in over him like a blanket, heavy and sluggish and cold. 

He's stiff and aching by the time his heart rate is back to normal. Every time this happens, he feels like he's been through an eight-hour practice. Slowly, he crawls down from his bunk, each step a deliberate action to take him closer to the present. His phone, abandoned on the floor, gets pocketed. His shoes get slipped on his feet. His face gets splashed with cold water in front of the bathroom sink, and he stares at his own dead-eyed reflection for a few minutes.

When he blinks, he sees Aaron's face from earlier. He blinks again and it's his own reflection staring back at him. 

His phone vibrates in his pocket as he steps out into the lounge. It's probably Matt, trying to figure out what the hell Kevin meant by _help,_ but he ignores it for now.

Neil's on one of the beanbags with Andrew's feet in his lap, changing the channel on the TV rapid-fire as Andrew stares at him with unbridled loathing.

"Night practice?" Kevin asks them, and his voice doesn't crack when he puts every ounce of confidence into it. No one has to know he's breaking apart inside tonight, because he's been breaking apart in one way or another since the day his mother died.

It's nothing new.

He gets his racquet. He grabs his duffel bag. He goes to the court. 

And he plays like his life depends on it, because it does.

\---

“You know I can’t keep a secret,” Matt says when he finds Kevin at the Fox Paw Café the next morning. 

“I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t serious,” Kevin tells him. “And besides, it was either you or Nicky.”

Matt winces and nods sympathetically. “Fine. What do you need?” 

“A date,” Kevin says. Before Matt gets his objection out, Kevin adds, “Don’t worry, it’s not for me. It’s for Aaron.”

“That’s not any better,” Matt says. His frown isn’t promising. “Did something happen with Katelyn?” 

It’s not Kevin’s place to talk about Aaron’s breakup. As far as he knows, the news is still a secret. At the very least, if Andrew knew, there would be an endless supply of _I told you so’_ s in their dorm. But Matt is probably already putting two and two together. Plus, if he doesn’t tell Matt now, the plan doesn’t work and the rest of the Foxes will all know the truth by Friday, when Katelyn cheers at their game and doesn’t end up making out with Aaron after their win. (They're going to win; Kevin knows that much for certain.) 

If his plan _does_ work, though, she’ll immediately realize that she made a huge mistake. By Thursday night at the latest, she’ll be begging for Aaron to take her back. No one other than Matt has to know about this temporary setback, and Kevin actually saves Aaron collateral damage in the long run, really. 

“She broke up with him,” Kevin admits. “And he needs help getting her back. He just doesn’t know it yet.” 

“Robin could help you,” Matt offers. “She’s … available.” 

Kevin levels an unimpressed glare at Matt. “Up until last month, she was terrified to be in the same room as him.” 

“But she’s not anymore, so…”

“Not Robin.” Kevin stays firm in his decision. If this is going to work, it’s going to take someone who can make Katelyn jealous. Someone who meshes with Aaron so well that Katelyn envies their closeness, which will never be Robin. Not to mention that Robin has enough to worry about with practice and classes and adjusting to life as a Fox and her sessions with Bee; Kevin doesn’t want to put this on her.

There aren’t a lot of other options, though. Allison and Renee are too publicly wrapped around each other's fingers. Dan is too publicly dating Matt. None of the Vixens would lie to Katelyn. That leaves … no one in Kevin’s small social circle. Which is why he needs Matt’s connections. 

“There’s a girl on the fourth floor. Swim team. She’d probably do it for a price,” Matt offers. “She’s cute, for a blonde. Majors in finance or accounting or something with numbers, so she’s smart. And she knows how to keep a secret, y’know? Plus, she’s short, like Aaron. The optics would be great.”

He pulls out his phone and taps through a few photos until he finds what he’s looking for and passes it to Kevin, who’s still stuck on Matt saying _the optics would be great,_ as though he’s arranged this kind of deal before. 

Matt’s not wrong. Objectively speaking, she’s Aaron’s type. Shoulder-length blonde hair, kind eyes, big smile. Kevin would know; he’s _also_ got a type but that’s neither here nor there. This is about Aaron, after all.

“She’s perfect,” he says, passing Matt the phone back. It doesn’t matter if the girl is his type or Aaron’s type or no one’s type. He just needs to have all the pieces ready to present his plan to Aaron for it to be a success, and this is the biggest one. “What’s her name?”

“Emily. Goes by Em. I can text her your info and whatever offer you're willing to make if you want this to happen.” 

“Tell her I’ll make it worth her while,” Kevin says, trying to peek at Matt’s screen while he types. Matt glances at him, a mixture of worry and pity and amusement, and Kevin huffs out a sigh. " _Not like that,_ Boyd. I meant money. Five-hundred dollars if Katelyn gets back together with him by the end of the week, but no one - and I mean _no one_ \- can find out about this. Two-hundred if it takes till the end of the month, and if it hasn't worked by then it's a lost cause anyway. But tell her it'll be easy to fix this by the end of the week. Emphasize the five hundred, I'm serious.” 

It takes all of two minutes for Em to text Matt back, and by the end of the afternoon, Kevin has her number saved in his phone and a promise in his inbox that he’s about to be five-hundred dollars poorer. It turns out he’s just in time, because when Kevin catches Aaron outside the dorms after class an hour later, Aaron looks like death. 

Worse than death, Kevin thinks, because there’s an edge to his miserable face that says _I’m going to be like this forever._ It’s off-putting, because for Kevin’s plan to work, Aaron needs to stop wallowing in his self-pity and pull himself together. He needs to look unaffected by the breakup, like he’s better off without her, not destroyed by her absence. Katelyn can’t see the power she has over him, because she’ll think it makes him weak. (He learned that from Riko, but the lesson still applies here).

Not that Kevin thinks Aaron is weak. But Kevin has been a casual acquaintance of Katelyn long enough to know that she has a thing for bad-boy silent types and doesn’t like criers. (Kevin definitely _didn’t_ find this out when Aaron and Katelyn had walked in on him last year crying over a copy of _Anna Karenina_ alone on a Saturday night).

But Kevin isn’t a quitter, and he’s quick to think on his feet. His plan is now two-pronged, and he hasn’t even proposed it to Aaron yet: get Em to fake-date Aaron until Katelyn realizes what she’s missing, and fix Aaron up into the bad boy that she remembers falling in love with.

That starts with Aaron getting his self-confidence back.

Aaron takes one look at Kevin and starts to walk past him, but Kevin grabs his arm at the last second and spins him around so they're walking away from Fox Tower.

"We need to talk," Kevin says, and Aaron freezes like a deer in the headlights for a split second. 

"Don't fucking say that," Aaron snaps at him before shaking free of his grasp and heading inside. 

Kevin jogs after him, and catches up to him right before the elevator doors start to shut. They stand in silence for a few seconds before Kevin tries again. 

“I was thinking about what you said yesterday.” 

Aaron turns his head slowly, looking more and more like Andrew with each passing minute, dead-behind-the-eyes. It makes Kevin shiver; he’s not used to that look on Aaron’s face. “If you say one word about me missing practice again I’m going to -”

“It’s not about practice,” Kevin interrupts. “It’s about Katelyn.”

The doors open and Aaron shoves past Kevin. “What, you want to tell me about Stanley? Because I already know. He’s built like a fucking _tank_ and he’s the first string quarterback of the football team - the _football team -_ it’s like she’s doing this just to piss me off.” 

Plan C, then, Kevin decides; he did _not_ know about Stanley. He didn’t realize Katelyn had already moved on, and part of him can’t help but wonder if she cheated on Aaron because two days is _fast._ He can’t ask, though. Not right now. He has work to do, and knowing the details of Katelyn's love life isn't exactly pertinent at the moment.

“You deserve better than her,” Kevin says, and it’s the honest truth. He’s always tolerated Katelyn on Aaron’s behalf, especially since Andrew’s animosity towards her always strained things and Kevin has never wanted to make that worse. But Aaron is his teammate and (former) roommate. Even though Aaron probably doesn’t think of Kevin as a friend (most people don’t), Kevin thinks of Aaron as a close acquaintance, if not a reluctant friend. He’s the only Fox who spends time with Kevin without a deal (see: Andrew), or pity (see: Matt, Dan, Allison), or pious obligation (see: Renee), or familial duty (see: Abby, Wymack), or a love of Exy (see: Neil, Robin, Jack). 

Aaron doesn’t seem to appreciate that sentiment, however.

“No, I never deserved _her,_ don’t you get it? She’s always deserved better, and why the fuck not? I’m Aaron Minyard, wanna-be doctor, wanna-be backliner, wanna-be boyfriend. Former drug addict. Not good enough for her to keep around. Not _fun_ enough. I don’t need to be fucking reminded of that right now, Kev.” He pauses long enough to take a breath. “Fuck - they’re not here, are they?” Aaron motions towards the hallway, running a frantic hand through his hair. He hasn’t looked this disheveled since last Thanksgiving. 

Kevin shrugs. “I don't know." 

Aaron deflates a little, fishing in his pocket for his keys. 

_Now or never,_ Kevin thinks. He shoves his phone in Aaron's face before Aaron disappears into his dorm for the rest of the night.

“I have an idea.”

Em’s picture is on the screen, smiling back at them. Aaron just about chucks it across the hall before Kevin snatches it back mid-air. 

“Don't get pissed off,” Kevin says. “It’s not what you think.”

“What, _Kevin Day_ has finally taken enough pity on me to set me up with one of your _fans?_ You don’t want me bringing down the rest of the team this season? Or do you want me to fuck this breakup out of my system? Because that's all I can see from whatever the fuck you think you're doing right now and I don't fucking want your help.” 

Kevin ignores the way those accusations hurt. Aaron of all people should know the disdain Kevin has for his fans, the way they think he’s some kind of Exy God. Without feelings, without dreams outside of Exy, without a life. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate them - he does. He just doesn’t like being flattened into a paper-thin parody of himself, unrecognizable from the person he is behind closed doors. 

(Closed doors that Aaron is allowed behind, that even the rest of the Foxes are only allowed to see rare glimpses behind.)

“Fuck Katelyn,” Kevin says. “You ate pizza every Friday for a year because she liked it. You’re _lactose intolerant._ Tell me what did she ever did to deserve you.”

(Kevin is the one who carries around an extra box of lactase pills in his backpack for Aaron, for those just-in-case situations that inevitably happen when they're in airports at 3AM or gas stations in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire and everyone else wants milkshakes or cheeseburgers or any of a thousand other foods that Aaron can't comfortably eat without those little enzymatic miracle pills.)

“She didn’t leave me," Aaron says. "That's more than I could've ever asked for. After the whole trial, after everyone was talking about me like I was some kind of animal, she didn’t leave. A little thing called _loyalty._ ”

(But the Foxes didn't leave Aaron. Neither did Kevin.)

“But she left _now,"_ Kevin says.

Aaron cuts a cruel smile back at Kevin. “And don’t I _fucking_ know it.” 

There’s a bitter silence after that, while Kevin tries to figure out how to sell Aaron on his plan. Admittedly, he got a little sidetracked, but he really does think Aaron deserves better. 

He just wants what’s best for Aaron, if he’s being honest. But it’s easier to say that this is a team-related issue, so he squares his shoulders and puts on the familiar mask: Kevin Day, Exy-obsessed starting striker for the Palmetto State University Foxes. He could play this part with his eyes shut, and he hopes it pisses Aaron off enough to agree to his plan. 

“We’re Foxes, Aaron,” he says in his I-know-better-than-you voice. “We get pushed down, and we get back up. We don’t give up, no matter what -” 

Aaron interjects, “Stop using your captain voice on me, it won’t -”

“- and I’m telling you not to give up. Katelyn isn’t worth losing your scholarship over. You’ve missed five practices this week because of her.” 

“That’s because you and Neil schedule too many of them!" Aaron shouts. "And don’t tell me Andrew is out there _trying_ every day. Just because he gets a gold star for attendance doesn’t mean he actually _participates._ Last week he sat down in the goal for an hour and made paper fortune tellers for himself and Renee. Tell me you’re threatening his scholarship and we’ll talk about me missing practice.”

Kevin takes a deep breath. He wants Aaron mad so that he’ll stop being so self-pitying. They can work with anger. They can’t work with whatever this is. He's going to regret this, but -

 _“_ Andrew doesn’t have to practice to be good,” Kevin says, and it chills the air in the room.

Aaron glares at him. _“Fuck. You."_

“No, fuck Katelyn for messing with your head,” Kevin says calmly. “See how easily you just believed me? The Aaron I know would’ve punched me by now.”

Aaron stares at him, confusion mingling with the anger scrawled across his face. Eventually, it settles into exhaustion.

“What do you want, Kev?” 

Kevin taps his phone screen so it lights up again, showing Em’s smiling face. 

“This is you, fighting back. Go on a couple of fake dates with Em. Show Katelyn what she’s missing. You make her realize that she made a mistake, like I did with the Ravens. I went to a better team and they -”

“Stop with the Exy,” Aaron says, shoving Kevin’s phone away. “You want me to make her jealous.” 

“Isn’t that what she’s doing?” 

Kevin pulls up a photo Katelyn posted an hour ago, and yes, he follows her; _yes,_ it’s just to make sure Aaron isn’t getting into trouble. She’s standing next to a massive guy in a football jersey, both of them smiling like idiots. He has an arm around her waist, his hand resting on her ass. The perfect, all-American couple.

“You think it’ll work?” Aaron asks quietly, staring at the photo until the screen goes dark.

Kevin shrugs. He doesn’t, in all honesty. Katelyn looks like she’s genuinely moved on, but he needs to do some investigating before he breaks that news to Aaron. He’ll need proof, to start with. And in the meantime, Aaron can fake-date Em. Best case scenario, it’ll help improve his self-confidence and get him back to his old self. Worst case scenario, Aaron gets Katelyn back.

Or - no, wait. He meant it’s the _best_ case scenario if Aaron gets Katelyn back.

“It’ll work,” Kevin says, his mouth suddenly dry. “Just make sure she sees you two together. It’ll remind her that you’re a great guy who can have anyone he wants. _Anyone,_ okay? You’re Aaron Minyard. Mensa material. Gonna be a kick-ass doctor one day. And you’re hot.” Kevin freezes, not quite sure where that came from _(he knows exactly where it came from),_ then quickly moves on, hoping Aaron cracks it up to shitty pep-talk skills. “You’ll get her back or find someone better.”

“But I don’t want anyone else.” 

“Trust me,” Kevin tells him, with the kind of intensity he usually reserves for bitching at Neil for messing with Andrew during practice. “This will work. Fuck Stewald. Katelyn’s your girl, not his.”

“It’s Stanley,” Aaron corrects, staring miserably at the hallway carpet. He still isn't smiling, but some of the tension drains from his body as he rolls each of his shoulders.

At least Aaron doesn’t skip practice that evening, so Kevin counts that as a win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter can be summarized with these wise words: _Sure, maybe Aaron used to like M &M’s and quiet study time when he was getting sex on the regular. But he’s sad and alone now, right? So your plan sucks._
> 
> (And yes, that means Kevin tries to make a list of things to heal Aaron's broken heart)
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


	3. Foolproof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Where the Wild Things Are_ is one of those books that someone should read to you aloud at least once in your life. Even if you're an adult. Listen to the crackle of the spine as the front cover is opened, the whispered hush of pages turning. That, to me, is the gentlest kind of affection to have for a person. 
> 
> I used to keep a copy on my desk until some kid pilfered it, but joke's on them because I always thought it was terribly sad and terribly lovely and all of the illustrations are terribly beautiful and there's something terribly ironic about a wild child stealing away with the book about the King of all Wild Things. I don't think we really own books, though, you know? We get to live in their pages for a little while but they're not actually ours. They're borrowed words, and eventually they'll find a new home with someone else, so it's kind of nice that it found a new home out there. 
> 
> "The king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all."  
> -Maurice Sendak 
> 
> Anyway, all of that is to say: I've been thinking about Kevin being read to by his mother when he was younger, and how that's both a gift and an act of love that he's never experienced in the years since because who would read aloud to him? Who would have the time and patience? 
> 
> He deserves one more story. One more time that he can feel safe and small and loved. 
> 
> We all do, I think.

Kevin shouldn’t be surprised that Aaron doesn’t show up to the library the next afternoon. But with only two days left before Friday’s game, time is of the essence. There isn’t room for both of them to have an emotional breakdown, so Kevin passes that baton to Aaron and texts Em himself. 

(He also isn’t about to waste a perfectly good library study room reservation just because Aaron is having a _moment,_ but that turns out to be a moot point since he has yet to get any studying done. Putting together a fake-dating fix-it plan takes more effort than he expected.) 

Em shows up a little while later, smelling like chlorine and summer even though October has Palmetto firmly in its grasp by now. Swimming is apparently a much better smelling sport than Exy.

“Does everyone on the swim team smell like that?” Kevin asks, sniffing unsubtly when she sits down. 

Em plucks a pen from behind her ear and points it at Kevin. “I don’t complain that you smell like boy sweat all the time, so keep your opinions to yourself.”

Kevin surreptitiously sniffs his jersey; it does _not_ smell like boy sweat. 

“Off-topic,” he mutters. “I’m not paying you to smell me. I’m paying you to make Aaron’s ex-girlfriend jealous, and we need a real plan. We only have two days left before Friday’s game.” 

Em starts unloading notebooks and textbooks from her backpack onto the table. Loose-leaf pages of notes go sprawling across Kevin’s own organized stack of coursework. He pushes page 4 of a calculus syllabus back towards her with a pointed look. 

“What?” She plops a pencil case with tiny frogs on it on the table between them. “I have work to do. I’m not quitting my degree to become a full-time fake girlfriend, so you can talk while I work.” 

That’s fine. They can still figure out a plan, even if Em is only half-listening between doing something algebraic in nature. Kevin can just hold everything together until the plan starts to work, right? It’s what he does with the other Foxes, after all. Why should this be any different? Even the news of Katelyn’s new boyfriend last night wasn’t enough to derail his confidence in the whole fake-dating plan. They’re just going to have to figure out how to best deal with that, and Aaron’s absence today, Em’s chaotic arrival … those aren’t bad omens. 

They’re _not._

But then she starts clicking her pen rapid-fire as she reads, and Kevin kind of wonders if there’s a better way to go about this.

It’s too late for that, though. Plan B is proceeding as scheduled. They’re going to fix this before the rest of the Foxes start to figure out Aaron and Katelyn have broken up. Just two more days of holding it together; Kevin can do that.

“Was this a stupid idea?” He blurts out. 

So much for holding it together. 

Em pauses her pen clicking. “Do I still get paid if I'm honest and you don’t like my answer?” 

Kevin nods.

“Then yes," she says. "It's the stupidest thing I've been paid to be a part of this semester."

Kevin doesn't want to know why she felt the need to put so many clarifiers on that, and focuses instead on Katelyn, who has just sat down across from their study room at a table by the window.

Alone. 

He has half a mind to confront her and ask what the hell Aaron did that was so insufferable and intolerable that she had to break up with him. What made her think she had the right to break his heart, he wants to ask. But he can’t mess this up without giving his plan a chance to work its magic, and Aaron will probably kill him if he finds out that Kevin confronted his ex in such a public way. Besides, if Kevin confronts Katelyn now, she’ll probably think Aaron is pathetic for not asking himself, for sending someone else as a proxy to do the emotional legwork for him, and then the plan would be ruined before it even got off the ground. 

_Deep breaths, Day,_ Kevin tells himself. He stays in his seat. 

“So where’s the lucky guy, anyway?” Em asks, glancing behind Kevin as though he’s somehow hidden an entire human being in the two spare feet of their study room that’s unoccupied. “Shouldn’t he be in on all of this scheming?” 

It’s a fair question. 

“He’s still working things out - which is fine. Breakups take time to get over, right? But he doesn’t really need to get over her because we’re going to get her back. He should really pause his grieving tomorrow -”

“Did you just say he should _pause his grieving?”_

“Yeah?” Kevin frowns. “It’s not like their breakup is going to be permanent. That’s what you’re here for.” 

Em looks vaguely uncomfortable. “Does he even want her back?” 

Kevin glares at Katelyn across the library, trying to see what Aaron saw in her. She’s objectively attractive, but so are a lot of other people. Like Jeremy. And Allison. And Neil. That doesn’t mean Kevin wants to _date_ any of them. 

Well - he’d date Jeremy. Probably. If the timing was right. 

_Off-topic,_ he chides himself mentally. 

“I mean, she’s not _that_ special,” Kevin says. “I mean, look at her. I don’t see anything for him to be that upset about.” 

Em glances over her shoulder towards Katelyn. “Damn, that’s the ex? I didn’t realize his ex was Katelyn, as in _Katelyn-_ Katelyn. I mean, look at those _legs,_ Exy boy - even you can't be immune to that. Then again, cheerleaders were my thing in high school. And now. I'd totally let her break my heart any day. So … what were we talking about?"

Kevin blinks back at her. "Katelyn." 

"Right - sorry, Katelyn. Look. At. Her," Em repeats emphatically. "Don't you see it? Some people are just born heartbreakers. It's like, an aura thing. A gut feeling.”

That doesn’t make Kevin feel any better about the situation. Oblivious to them, Katelyn keeps turning pages in her textbook and jotting down notes. Kevin copies her, pulling out his own notebook to look less conspicuous in between glaring daggers at Katelyn-the-Born-Heartbreaker.

But Kevin's notes are not scholastic in nature.

_HOW TO FIX AARON’S BROKEN HEART_

_1)_

He unfortunately stalls, unable to figure out what would actually fix Aaron's broken heart, and Em snorts when she sees him stuck on number one. 

“Put down a one night stand.” 

“He’s not that kind of guy,” Kevin says, but really, he doesn’t know if that’s the truth. As long as he’s known Aaron, the guy has been wrapped around Katelyn’s finger. Being single might reveal a side to Aaron that Kevin hasn’t seen before. 

He wonders what other ways this breakup could change Aaron, before deciding that the thought is too depressing to entertain right now, and he glares at his empty list. He likes Aaron just fine the way he is now. Or the way he was, right before Katelyn broke up with him, since at this very moment Aaron is probably throwing darts at a picture of Kevin’s face back at the dorms or burning a tiny effigy with Kevin's name on it in hopes that Kevin will spontaneously combust. 

He tries again.

_HOW TO FIX AARON’S BROKEN HEART_

_1) Help him make Katelyn jealous._

That one is pretty easy - that’s the whole point of the fake-dating plan.

 _2) Show him that he can have fun without her._

This one is Plan C. Or Plan D. He’s losing count. But it’s good to have a backup just in case the fake-dating doesn’t work and Aaron ends up broken-hearted and single for a more long-term (or permanent) basis. 

Which logically brings Kevin to his next few points.

_3) a) Help him meet someone new. Or -_

_3) b) Don’t help him meet someone new, but help him learn to be happy single._

_4) M &M’s. _

_5) Start a mandatory quiet study hour in the dorms so Aaron doesn’t have to come all the way to the library to do his work._

_6) Stop bothering him about practice so much._

_7) Get Matt + Jack out of Aaron's room so he can have “private time”._

Em makes a gagging sound from across the table, and Kevin glances up to see her reading his list, upside-down.

“Did you just put private time in quotations? _Quotations?_ And also - _private time?_ What are you, twelve? Adults call that _let a dude jerk off in peace._ And your number three sucks - both parts of it. Also number four, and number five. Maybe just scrap the entire thing, actually, it’s a shitty list. Here’s your new number one: _get him drunk every weekend so he can have sex with strangers until he forgets that Katelyn ever existed."_

Kevin puts a protective arm across his paper. 

“You don’t know him," he insists. "He _likes_ these things.”

“Sure, maybe he used to like M&M’s and quiet study time when he was getting sex on the regular. But he’s sad and alone now, right? So your plan sucks.” She taps the paper, punctuating each word. “Needs more sexual release.”

Kevin frowns down at the list, and crosses off M&M’s reluctantly. Those are definitely Aaron’s favorite. He glances up at Em, who nods encouragingly, but he’s not convinced. He can always add them back later when she’s gone. 

Then, in very tiny writing in the very-far-bottom-corner of the page, he puts:

_8) More sexual release?_

It's the saddest, tiniest question mark he's ever put on paper. It feels like he’s betraying Aaron by even writing that down, because he knows that Aaron has almost never brought up sex in any context. He’s walked out on conversations before when they got too suggestive, when Matt or Nicky or Allison brought up their own past exploits in what Kevin felt was a pretty harmless way. Aaron didn’t feel the same, obviously, but that’s not the point. He’s allowed to be private about that kind of stuff, and Kevin knows better, so it feels like a betrayal when he stares at the words _sexual release_ staring back at him.

He tells himself there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. 

Em quirks an eyebrow up as she squints to read the tiny letters before giving him a wide smile and a double thumbs up. 

Then, she steals his pen and scrawls HOT REVENGE SEX in huge capital letters across the top of the page, and that’s what makes it official. Kevin can’t use this list anymore.

“There,” she says. “That’s it. That’s your list.”

He isn’t at all convinced, and he turns to a new blank page now that Em has thoroughly defiled his first list, hoping that she won’t continue her running commentary.

_Things Aaron used to do with Katelyn that he’ll miss:_

_1) Midnight milkshakes._

_2) Vinny’s for weekly date nights._

_3) Sharing popcorn at the movie theater._

_4) Bitching about Andrew to a neutral third party._

“Getting drunk head,” Em offers unhelpfully. “Add that next, every guy likes drunk head. Not that I’m speaking from experience. I’ve just read a lot of Cosmo, y’know? And who's Andrew?” 

“I’m not putting drunk head on the list.”

“Seriously? Look, are you trying to help him out or force him to reenact every bad rom-com that’s ever been written? Because Stephanie Meyer could’ve written a better list than this.”

“...I want to help him,” Kevin says after a pause. 

“Then trust me: don’t think too much into this. He’s sad now, but he can’t stay that way if you drag his sorry ass to the bar and wingman the shit out of him until he gets laid.”

Kevin stares down at his list, unconvinced. He doesn’t _think_ Aaron wants casual sex, but then again, he doesn’t presume to know what going through a breakup is like, so maybe Em is right. The closest thing he’s ever had to a real relationship was with Thea, but she was more of a media partner than anything else. They hadn’t done much more than hold hands in front of the cameras and hug after games back when they were both Ravens.

And - sure, they’d _maybe_ hooked up on-and-off for a while, but that wasn’t because they were dating. They were just two lonely people who could temporarily fill each other’s hollow spaces, and every stolen moment between them was a desperate attempt to reclaim some of the humanity they’d lost over their years in the Nest. Not to mention they both had bigger things to worry about at the time. And now, ever since Thea went pro, ever since Kevin left the Nest, they haven’t talked much. Happily-ever-afters aren’t exactly built at Evermore. 

The point is that Kevin hasn’t really been through a breakup, and for the first time, he wonders if he’s really the best person to be helping Aaron right now. At heart, Kevin is still a Raven. That means it’s hard to let people in, and even harder to imagine there could be some part of a relationship that would be worth all of the hurt.

Some part that makes the pain of coming undone worth it, because that’s been the only constant in Kevin’s life: the pain.

The loss.

So it's almost funny that he can’t figure out exactly what Aaron lost when Katelyn broke up with him. But in a sick way, it makes sense, since Kevin has only ever known touch to be destructive, even when it's intent is to be gentle. It makes sense, since Kevin has been too busy to bother with relationships. 

That’s what he tells himself, anyway. He blames his chaotic schedule for everything else, after all. Packed with practices and games and sponsorships and interviews - who wouldn’t be anxious? Who wouldn’t need a break sometimes? Who wouldn’t have nightmares and flashbacks and mornings when they wake up genuinely wondering how much more one person can take? 

But the truth is that Kevin’s lack of interest in any kind of relationship, casual or not, has nothing to do with being busy or distracted or uninterested. 

The truth is that he’s terrified of any kind of intimacy - physical, emotional, it's all the same to him.

He’s never admitted aloud that he sometimes struggles to remember the last time he was touched without the expectation of reciprocity. The last time someone touched him because they wanted to make him feel good, or the last time someone touched _him,_ instead of the version of Kevin Day that always kept his chin up, the version that everyone assumes will always bounce back from whatever shit is thrown his way. 

Not that Thea hadn’t tried to be that person for him. She had, but he hadn’t been in a place where being vulnerable felt safe. He can’t remember the last time that he let someone touch the version of himself that was breakable, or when he even let someone get close enough to do so. When did he last try to unveil the softest, ugliest parts of himself, the ones that he usually keeps tucked safely behind of his above-it-all exterior? 

The real answer is never. Back when he still had trust left to share with the world, he didn’t know those darker parts of himself existed, lurking just beneath the surface of his consciousness like great sleeping beasts, that, once woken, should have been caressed back into a restless slumber by a patient hand. But that was when he still believed that there were things - people, places, hearts - that death couldn’t touch, and those beasts are not gentle giants anymore. They’re monsters now, shaped by every loss he’s endured over the years and sharpened by the unending darkness of his grief. 

Belatedly, he wonders if helping Aaron is going to bring up too many of his own issues and insecurities. Maybe it was narcissistic to think that he could be the one to make any of this better, for thinking that his version of help could be of value when he doesn’t know the first thing about breakups or makeups.

But maybe that’s what friends are for. Maybe he doesn’t need to have all the answers, or be the best person for the job. Maybe he just needs to keep showing up, even when it’s hard. Even when it hurts. Maybe friends are the ones who pick up the pieces when everything seems beyond hope, and maybe all of those edges aren’t so sharp when they’re held in someone else’s hands. 

He doesn’t know how to keep his own heart safe from harm, but maybe he could learn how to build a safe haven for someone else’s. 

He tries to shake himself out of those thoughts, because that’s not the point of helping Aaron. He’s just here to help patch things up with Katelyn so they can all return their lives to the status quo. But there isn’t much to distract him other than the two lists in front of him, and he keeps looking at the words _sexual release._

Em is no help as a distraction right now; she’s engrossed in a page of sloppily scrawled numbers, not at all concerned with Kevin’s extended silence. 

Before he can slip back into dangerous territory and start making a list of ways Aaron would be better off without Katelyn, he pulls out his phone and sends Aaron a text.

It’s innocent enough: _I’m coming over._ They need to talk about the plan, after all. 

He folds both lists in half and stuffs them into his backpack, because there are still forty-eight hours until the game on Friday. That’s more than enough time to convince Katelyn to take Aaron back, and then Kevin can go back to worrying about midterms and Exy and everything else he usually worries about. 

Things will go back to normal soon enough.

He just has to be patient.

\---

As expected, Aaron isn’t exactly thrilled to see him. 

“What do you want?” He asks, crossing his arms. It’s not the warmest welcome, and he’s blocking the doorway so Kevin can’t get past him. 

“We need to talk,” Kevin says. 

Aaron visibly tenses, and for a second Kevin thinks he’s about to be demoted from reluctant friend to enemy. But the moment passes, leaving Aaron more deflated than before.

“Can you stop _saying_ that?” He grits out, but he retreats from the doorway and the potential for conflict returns to a manageable level.

Kevin follows him into the suite, and stops in his tracks when he catches sight of the bedroom. Aaron doesn’t notice, continuing on to the kitchen while Kevin stares at the mess in front of him.

Matt’s bed is neatly made with the same navy blue sheets as always, and Jack’s bed has neon orange ones à la Neil Josten - that half of the room is presentable, controlled chaos. But Aaron’s half is a wreck. There are wrinkled #05 jerseys on the floor, and gym shorts hanging off of the back of his desk chair. Deodorant and body wash and shampoo bottles are mixed into piles of dirty socks and boxers and notebooks, charging cords are tangled into a knot on the floor, and half-empty packets of Skittles and M&M’s are spilling out from under the bed. 

Aaron’s voice echoes from the kitchen. “You coming or what? I thought you said we have to _talk.”_

Kevin pushes the bedroom door open all the way, ignoring Aaron for the moment. Aaron has never been messy like this. When he still lived in 317, he color-coded entire sets of notebooks and folders and textbooks by subject. He washed his laundry every Sunday night. He even folded his socks. 

He was never like this.

Kevin almost asks _what happened,_ but stops himself just in time. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Aaron isn’t taking the breakup well, but this seems like more than a few days’ worth of mess. 

This … is a lot. 

And he’s not just mad when he realizes that. He’s furious. 

Furious with Matt and Jack for not telling him sooner. With Aaron, for not saying anything was wrong. With himself, for not noticing. 

This isn’t just breakup sad. Kevin shoves the door all the way open, and the first step into the room he takes ends up crushing on a half-eaten sleeve of Oreos. The crinkling plastic draws Aaron’s attention, and it’s only a moment before his footsteps return down the hall to investigate. 

“What the fuck,” Aaron says, but there’s no fight left in his voice, just resigned defeat when he sees Kevin staring at the mess on his side of the room. “I didn’t say you could go through my stuff.” 

Kevin holds up a discarded copy of _Catcher in the Rye,_ and the paperback’s cover is bent in half. He tosses it onto the bed, and it lands in the middle of the nest of blankets. 

“How long.” 

Aaron shifts uneasily, nudging a box of Kleenex away from his bed with his toe, but he doesn’t answer. 

“Aaron,” Kevin repeats. “How long has it been like this?” 

Aaron runs a hand through his hair, and he looks exhausted in this light, surrounded by the chaos of his mind manifested into reality via the actual mess between them. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “A couple of weeks, maybe. Don't act like this is a big deal, because it's not.” 

“If I asked Jack or Matt, would they say the same thing?” 

Aaron shrugs, like he doesn’t care. Then again, he probably doesn’t. 

“Fine,” Kevin says, rolling up his sleeves and pointing to the bed. “Sit. We’re taking care of this before we talk.” 

Aaron sits while Kevin starts sorting through the mess, picking up wrappers and stacking books and putting laundry in piles. After a minute of Kevin working in silence, Aaron starts to fix the sheets on his bed, untangle the mess of cords, organize some of the stacks of notes across the desk. Once they're both working, it doesn’t take that long to make things presentable again. But Aaron waits until Kevin isn’t wrist-deep in dirty clothes to offer any kind of explanation.

“It’s not what you think it is,” he says after Kevin has handed him a bag of trash and shoved all of the dirty laundry into a single pile by the foot of his bed.

“And what do I think it is?” 

Aaron shrugs again, and Kevin is starting to hate how much he looks like Andrew lately, how they wear an identical shade of apathy. Only in Aaron’s case, it’s made sharper by the cutting edge of his self-doubt. 

Kevin wants to shake Aaron, to ask him why he didn’t ask for help sooner, why he still isn’t asking for help when Kevin is standing right in front of him, willing to do whatever it takes to fix whatever mess Aaron has gotten himself into. He wants to ask him if he even cares, but he doesn’t think he wants to hear Aaron’s answer to that one. 

Out of nowhere, or maybe out of a very particular place, Em’s words from earlier slip back into focus in Kevin’s mind: _does he even want her back?_

He watches Aaron set the trash bag by the door. He watches Aaron sit back down on the bed and trace one finger along a loose thread on his sheets. He watches Aaron do all of these things as objectively as possible, turning himself into an observer. It’s only now that he’s really looking that he can see the cracks in Aaron’s armor, the places where he usually hides his darkness slipping out into the light for Kevin to take inventory of. Ugly things, things that shouldn’t see the light of day, things that should repulse him. 

But they’re familiar things, and Kevin won’t shy from the wriggling mess spilling out of Aaron right now because - on a good day - he knows how to catch these kinds of slippery doubts, these self-destructive urges, these deceptively convincing thought-spirals. 

He clears his throat. “I’m going to keep asking until you answer me: what do I think this is?” 

Aaron stops playing with the thread, his eyes heavy as he looks up at Kevin. “Keep asking then. I don’t really care.” 

There are so many words bouncing around inside of his head right now. How it’s just a messy dorm room, like every other college kid has had at some point. How it’s so much more than a messy room, and none of the Foxes are like any other college kid. How it’s a bad sign. Or a coincidence. A red flag, a red herring, or nothing at all. It’s a message that Kevin can’t quite decipher, but he doesn’t want to infer meaning where meaning doesn’t need to be inferred.

He flops onto the mattress next to Aaron, staring up at the bottom of the empty bunk above them. He wonders if this is what it was like for Aaron to have the bottom bunk back in their suite, if it feels the same for him now that no one is sleeping above him. He wonders if Aaron ever stares up at the metal springs holding the empty mattress afloat, if he ever threads his fingers through them and tightens his grip until the metal presses curlicues into his palms like Kevin is now, waiting for his hand to go numb.

The right thing to say would be _I’m here if you need me._ The right thing would be _I’ll listen if you want to talk._ The right thing would be to tell Wymack and Bee so Aaron can get help if he needs it, to make sure this isn’t the first sign of an impending breakdown. But Kevin has never been good at saying the right thing at the right time, and what comes out is all wrong. 

He lets go of the mattress springs and his hand falls on the bed between them, limp as the blood flow slowly returns.

“So the plan,” he says, and it sounds callous even to his own ears. But Aaron doesn’t move from the spot he’s claimed on the bed next to Kevin, with his toes tucked carefully beneath him, and he doesn't tell Kevin to get out. So he takes that as permission to continue. “I talked with Em today. She said she can meet you tomorrow afternoon at the Fox Paw Café in between classes, since that’s where you and Katelyn used to go every Thursday afternoon.” 

Aaron nods, vaguely acknowledging him. 

“And you’ll just - you can tell me if you don’t think this will work - you’ll just pretend that she’s your girlfriend, assuming Katelyn shows up like usual. And that’s all it takes. She’ll see that you’re moving on and happy and with someone new and she’ll realize it was a mistake to leave you.” 

Now that he says it aloud, Kevin isn’t so sure the plan is going to work, especially with how miserable Aaron looks currently. It’s a good thing he has his backup lists from this afternoon, because he's starting to think he might need them if things don't work out by Friday as planned.

“I don’t remember telling you about meeting her at the Fox Paw,” Aaron says.

“It’s a small enough campus,” Kevin says defensively. “It’s not unreasonable to think I would fill in the blanks when you disappeared for two hours every Thursday afternoon.”

Not that he needs to be defensive about this - he keeps tabs on all of the Foxes for the most part. At the very least, he knows their class schedules since he’s the one who helps Wymack figure out practice schedules every semester. He just happens to know a few extra details about Aaron’s because - 

It doesn’t matter. It’s not like he’s been paying extra attention to Aaron. He worries about all of the Foxes in equal measure. 

Aaron looks as unconvinced as Kevin feels right now. “You really think that’s going to work?” 

Kevin nods. “Yeah. Yup. It’ll - it’ll definitely work. She’d be crazy not to take you back. Just be … couple-y with Em.”

“That’s not a word,” Aaron objects. 

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

Aaron might be acting purposefully obtuse, but if he is, Kevin doesn’t pick up on it. Or he chooses not to, because he flips onto his stomach and stares up at Aaron, and he runs his hand across Aaron’s upturned palm on the bed between them, thumb to pinky. 

“Touch her,” Kevin says quietly, staring at the place their hands are touching, interlacing their fingers. 

He catalogues all of the little details that he usually ignores: the calculator watch on Aaron’s wrist, the way his nails are bitten down to nothing, the scar that runs the entire length of his ring finger. 

_Touch her._

He should qualify that. _Touch her like you used to touch Katelyn._ But he doesn’t want to, because he doesn't want to think about Aaron touching Katelyn. He wants to say _like this,_ so he does. He says it, and Aaron doesn’t move. 

Doesn’t breathe.

His skin is warm against Kevin’s where their hands are linked, rough in some patches, smooth in others, and it feels nice for Kevin to hold onto someone who holds him back. Less one-sided, less desperate, less forced. 

“I read an article once that said if you’re attracted to someone, you look at their lips more often,” Kevin says, tilting his head to the side while he stares at Aaron straight on, and Aaron glances down at Kevin’s lips, just briefly, before he looks away. “So … do that, too. With Em, I mean. And lean in a little when she talks. Try to smile - not like that. God, Aaron, you know how to smile, you’re not Andrew. Don't be an asshole - a _real_ smile.” 

Aaron lets go of Kevin’s hand to shove him. Kevin shoves him right back, and for a moment, they’re both grinning at each other while they settle back into place, and Kevin ends up sitting next to Aaron on the edge of the bed. 

“Like that,” Kevin says quietly, but it makes Aaron’s smile disappear and all he wants to do is figure out how to get it back. 

“I’m not you. I can’t fake being happy.” 

There’s an implication buried in there - that his smile just now might’ve been real, but Kevin can’t chase that train of thought without it ending badly, so he lets it slip from his grasp before it morphs into some twisted kind of hope. 

“Fine. Then go full asshole,” Kevin says, exasperated. “Girls love that, right? Angry, brooding, whatever. Just make sure you wear that shirt you wore to the thing last year -"

“The one with the stripes?” 

“No, the other one,” Kevin motions vaguely towards Aaron’s face. “The green one. It brings out your eyes.” 

Something settles into the silence between them, a minefield of confusing half-finished sentences and memories that neither of them knows how to traverse safely. 

It wasn’t just _a thing_ last year, and it wasn’t just a shirt. It was the Winter Banquet. It was Kevin helping Aaron fix his tie on the bus beforehand, it was Katelyn falling asleep on Aaron’s shoulder after, it was Kevin slow-dancing with Allison during the in-between, with her whispered _you’re fucked_ playing on a loop in his head the entire way home. 

It was Aaron staying over in Katelyn’s dorm for the first time that night, and Kevin being too drunk to notice until much, much later.

“She was the first girl I really dated,” Aaron says, clearing his throat. “The first one I was serious about, at least. She knows - she’ll think something’s up if I act _couple-y_ with Em tomorrow. I mean, I’m not even that good at real dating -” 

“Says who?" 

“Says Katelyn. And her opinion is the one that matters the most right now."

Kevin wants to fundamentally object to that statement, but he holds his tongue and manages to figure out a more neutral response. 

“You’re a better boyfriend than she deserved. But if you want her back, we’re going to figure out how to make that happen. And that starts tomorrow, at the Fox Paw. Deal?” 

Aaron stares at Kevin’s outstretched hand. “I don’t like deals.” 

“You made one with Andrew,” Kevin points out. 

“Exactly,” Aaron says, but that doesn't stop him from taking Kevin's hand. 

This time, there’s nothing warm about their touch. It’s all business, and Kevin makes sure he’s the first to let go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading along, and Happy (early) New Year!!! <3 See you all in 2021!!!!!!


End file.
